The mandatory adoption of IFRS2 and its equivalent FAS123R (Share-Based Payment) presented a radical change in financial reporting of Share-Option Based Compensation (SOBC). Both IASB and FASB adopted the view that disclosure is not an adequate substitute for recognition; consequently, all SOBC transactions ultimately lead to expense recognition, measured at the grant-date fair value of SOBC. This thesis identifies and evaluates the major financial reporting implications of alternative reporting methods of accounting for SOBC across a global context and over different time periods for pre and post adoption of IFRS2/FAS123R. It explores two key research questions using an international sample of US and EU banks over the period (2004-2011). The first research question aims to identify, analyse, compare and evaluate the total effect of the compulsory adoption of IFRS2/FAS123R, on selected banks’ performance measures. Underpinned by equity valuation and agency theories, the second question aims to assess the extent to which the mandatory recognition approach to expensing SOBC provides more value relevant information that better reflects the incentive properties of such rewards than the disclosure approach. The findings show that the expensing of SOBC has resulted in modest and statistically significant negative effects on both US and EU banks’ selected financial performance measures with the impact being more likely to be higher in the US banking sector. The reported modest impact does not reflect earlier research estimations indicating that concerns and criticism of the implementation of IFRS2/FAS123R are largely unsubstantiated. The results also indicate that the recognition regime to expense SOBC is significantly more value relevant and better reflects the intangible value attributable to such rewards, relative to the disclosure regime. The influence of the differences in the financial reporting contexts on the intangible value attributable to SOBC is less burdensome after the mandatory adoption of IFRS2/FAS123R.

This thesis contains four essays that examine the relationships among risk disclosures, multi-level governance, credit ratings, and bank value in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) banks. These essays concentrate on four closely linked risk disclosures, and governance topics that quantitatively investigate the antecedents and informativeness of risk disclosures by banks from 14 countries in MENA region over the 2006–2013 inclusive period. The first essay aims at investigating the impact of multi-layer governance mechanisms on the level of risk disclosures by banks. The essay result suggests a variation between MENA banks in the level of risk disclosures with a significant improvement from 2006 to 2013. Specifically, the findings are three-fold. First, the results suggest that Sharia Supervisory Board (SSB) is positively associated with the level of risk disclosures by banks. Second and at the bank-level, the essay finds that ownership (governmental ownership and family ownership) and board (board size and non-executive directors) structures have a positive effect on the level of risk disclosures by banks, whilst CEO duality is negative, but insignificantly related to bank risk disclosures. At the country-level, the evidence suggests that control of corruption has a positive effect on the level of bank risk disclosures, whilst political stability and absence of violence have a negative, but insignificant association with the level of bank risk disclosures. In the second essay, the thesis investigates the relationships among national governance quality (NGQM), Islamic governance quality (ISGQ), including other bank-level governance mechanisms, and risk management and disclosure practices (RMDPs); and consequently ascertains whether NGQM has a moderating influence on the ISGQ -RMDPs nexus. The findings are four-fold. Firstly, this study finds that RMDPs are higher in banks from countries with higher NGQM. Secondly, this essay shows that RMDPs are higher in banks with better Islamic governance. Thirdly, the study finds that board size and non-executive directors have a positive effect on the level of RMDPs. Finally, this study finds evidence that suggests that NGQM has a moderating effect on the Islamic governance quality-RMDPs nexus. The third essay explores whether RMDPs have a predictive effect (informativeness) on banks’ credit ratings (BCRs); and consequently ascertains whether governance structures can moderate such an association. The findings suggest that RMDPs have a predictive effect on BCRs. The study finds that the quality of the BCR is higher in banks that have higher risk disclosures, board size, government ownership, board independence, women directors and established SSB. On the other hand, the results indicate that the BCR quality is lower in banks that have higher foreign ownership, and CEO role duality. Furthermore, the findings suggest that governance structures moderate the relation between RMDPs and BCRs. The final essay examines the extent to which RMDPs and multi-level governance can explain observable changes in bank value in a number of ways. First, this essay seeks to examine whether RMDPs can influence the value of banks. The second objective is to examine how NGQM may affect the bank value. Finally, this essay explores the relationship between operating in better- or poorly-governed countries and the market value of banks. The results confirm the substantial role of risk disclosures and multi-level governance in improving bank valuation in MENA. More specifically, the results indicate that market valuation is higher in banks with bigger foreign ownership, board size, board independence, Islamic governance, and NGQM. The results also show a significant negative relationship between CEO power and bank value. The research’s empirical findings are largely in line with the predictions of the multi-theoretical framework that incorporates insights from agency, signalling, legitimacy, institutional, and resource dependence theories. The study findings are robust to alternative firm- and country-level controls, alternative multi-level governance mechanisms, risk disclosure proxies, alternative estimation techniques, and endogeneity problems. In doing so, this study extends, as well as contributes to the banking and governance literature in a number of ways. First, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this thesis provides a first-time cross-country evidence on the level of risk disclosures in MENA countries, especially following the 2007/08 financial crisis in the banking industry. Second, this thesis offers first-time evidence on the informativeness of Islamic governance quality and risk disclosures from equity and debt markets. Third, this thesis offers evidence and extends prior research on the influence of multi-level governance on bank value, and credit ratings, using a multi-theoretical framework. Fourth, the study offers first-time evidence on the effect of national governance quality on banks’ risk disclosures, credit ratings, and bank value.

The number of domestic and cross border bank mergers and acquisitions (M&A) has increased over the last decade with a resultant impact on the bank dividend. This study examines the effect of M&A on the dividend policy by comparing the abnormal returns, profitability and dividend policy of the domestic and cross border bank acquirers. The study focused on EU mega-bank mergers and acquisitions within 1997-2007 involving only commercial-to-commercial banks. The sample consists of a total of 62 mega-M&A with a minimum deal value of €500 million. Three hypotheses were formulated specifically to test: (i) the wealth effect and geographical diversification of the M&A between domestic and cross border acquirers; (ii) the effect on in the financial performance of both acquirers and (iii) the M&A impact on dividend policy on banks after bank M&A. Two strands of the literature were reviewed focusing on M&A and dividend policy. The event study methodology was used to calculate the abnormal returns of both the domestic and cross border acquirers which were standardised. A long window of 61 days was applied to capture a satisfactory length of pre and post merger events that could capture the behaviour of the abnormal returns and consequent effect on dividend policy. The hierarchical regression model was used to estimate the impact of the variables on the profitability and dividend policy of the acquirer banks. In comparison with the domestic acquirers, the cross border abnormal returns showed a trend of significant negative results following the M&A announcement. The domestic acquirers showed no significance but, on average have higher cumulative total standardised abnormal returns (CTSAR) than the cross border acquired banks. The result of the financial performance showed that CTSAR of the cross border acquirers is significantly affected by the profitability of the banks but insignificant with domestic acquirers. However, the cost-to –income ratio (CIR) significantly affects the performance of both bank acquirers. CIR and RISK (measured by the ratio of the loan provision to net interest revenue of the banks) highly correlated with profitability of both the domestic and cross border acquirers. The management of costs and loans risks were found to be significant variables in the achievement of profitability among domestic acquirers. The dividend policy hypothesis result indicated that CTSAR has a weak correlation and insignificant effect on the dividend policy variables. Infact, the Causality test result confirmed that the CTSAR does not Granger cause dividend policy. However, the study provides strong support to previous studies that beta, liquidity, taxes, and the finance structure of the acquirers are significant variables in the formulation of the dividend policy of the merged banks. The beta, which a proxy for risk, is the most significant factor affecting the dividend policy of the merged banks.

The financial services sector is investing considerable sums of money into mobile banking services, but the uptake by customers has been low. The cost to benefit ratio of mobile banking is highly unsatisfactory when the costs of developing and managing the channel are considered. Many of the advantages of Internet banking are shared by mobile banking e.g. control and time saving. Mobile banking also offers higher convenience with the ability to carry out banking whenever and wherever you are. It is hoped that mobile banking can be as successful as Internet banking. A major factor in the low adoption of mobile banking is usability, and there is a need for research on the issues surrounding mobile banking as so far little has been conducted. This thesis seeks to investigate the usability issues surrounding Short Message Service (SMS) banking. It identifies three general functions of SMS in electronic banking: transactions, communication/CRM and security. Three empirical usability evaluations are presented that explored customers’ perceptions and attitudes of using these functions of SMS banking. The research presented here provides empirical evidence for the thesis that usability is a significant factor in the low customer adoption of SMS banking. It also shows that related to usability issues are customer concerns over the security of SMS as a banking channel. Older users will find SMS banking less usable than younger users and are more ambivalent regarding SMS in general. It recommends the most usable message input format to use in SMS banking and contributes insights on how best to realise the practical application of SMS banking and services. The findings from these studies will help improve usability in mobile banking services.

Due to the lack of efficient offline payment services for small value payment, and along with the booming of the Internet and telecommunications technologies, new electronic payment services and instruments are becoming increasingly popular and important in the first and second decades of the 21 century in China’s electronic commerce economy. The new electronic payment instruments, which primarily include Internet third party payment and virtual currency, are the subjects of research in this thesis. This thesis focuses on electronic payment law relating to the Internet, and the e-payment law which has been altered substantially by the Internet, rather than focusing on a comprehensive law of payment, clearance and settlement, or traditional mechanisms of payment, such as negotiable instruments and electronic funds transfers that occurs only within the intranet of closed banking systems. Although the new electronic payment instruments cannot escape from the influence of the traditional payment, and new payment instruments are based upon the traditional one both in technological infrastructure and in legal framework, the new electronic payment instruments do possess their own special features in technology, business models and in law. On this regard, readers might be asking why the author did not use the topic of “Internet Payment” or “online payment” instead of “new electronic payment” for the title of the thesis. The answer is because in China, telephone payment, along with Internet payment should be collectively considered as new electronic payment tools, and therefore, it is too narrow to just use the term “Internet Payment”. Also, the word “online” is, somewhat, a misleading word, and the author tries to specify in most cases whether it is an “Internet” or a “mobile network” or “landlines” or any other forms of networks in the following analysis when the concept of “online” has to be referred to. On the other hand, it is a truth that, among those new electronic payment instruments, it is the Internet that has been shaking and reshaping the infrastructure framework of payment, clearance and settlement; and telephone payment as well as mobile payment, to a great extent, are relying on the Internet. Therefore, Internet-related payment lies at the heart of the thesis. Furthermore, in China, new electronic payment instruments are largely created and facilitated through non-bank Internet third party payment providers and virtual currency, These two types of new electronic payment services possess enormous scale and are developing in a fast speed. Therefore, this thesis will treat the law on non-bank Internet third party payment platform providers and virtual currency as two crucial points to discuss.1 1.2 Research Questions The hypothesis of the thesis is that legal issues arising from new electronic payment services, which heavily rely on and is substantially attached to the Internet, are different from legal issues pertaining to traditional electronic payment services which are primarily intra-bank or inter-bank related. For example, in the Internet third party payment system (see Chapter 4 of the thesis), non-bank intermediaries are involved which is outside the regulatory framework of the traditional banking and payment system; also for example, in the virtual currency system (see Chapter 5 & 6 of the thesis), money is not issued by governments and denominated into any national legitimate currencies such as Renminbi in China, instead, money is issued by private Internet companies and denominated into currencies of those private companies. Thus, there are a number of legal questions to be considered: how is the Internet third party payment being regulated in China? What are the key issues in regulating the Internet third party payment? Is the current regulation appropriate? How to regulate the Internet games virtual currency in China? How is the Internet third party payment and virtual currency regulated in the European Union? Are there any lessons that China may learn from the European Union? In the thesis, the author examines these important legal issues relating to new electronic payment in detail, evaluate current existing regulations both in China and in the EU/UK, and propose specific regulatory approaches and measures for China.

This thesis consists of three essays on sovereign risk and banking. In the first essay, we examine the determinants of sovereign risk in the Eurozone focusing on the recent crisis episode and search for a self-fulfilling contagion link by using an exogenous ECB policy announcement for identification. our principal components analysis reveals that the perceived commonality in default risk among peripheral and core Eurozone countries increased after the announcement. An event study detects significant pre-announcement news transmission from Spain to Italy, Belgium, France and Austria that clearly dissipates post-announcement. Country-specific regressions of CDS spreads on systematic risk factors illustrate frequent days of large adverse shocks affecting simultaneously those same Eurozone countries during the pre-announcement period; but not afterwards. Altogether these findings support the view that market expectations during Eurozone crisis were at least partially self-fulfilling and ECB policy helped to contain such adverse dynamics. In the second essay we focus on European banks' sovereign bond exposures. By using a novel bank-level dataset covering the entire timeline of the Eurozone crisis, we first reconfirm that the crisi led to the reallocation of sovereign debt from foreign to domestic banks. This reallocation was only visible for banks as opposed to other domestic private agents and it cannot be explained by the banks' risk-shifting tendency. In contrast to the recent literature focusing only on sovereign debt. We show that the bank's private sector exposures were (at least) equally affected by a rise in home bias. Finally, we propose a new debt reallocation channel based on informational frictions and show that crisi-country debt was not only reallocated to domestic banks, but also to the informationally closer foreign banks. Our results imply that informational asymmetries among banks played a key role in the recent fragmentation across Eurozone debt markets. In the third essay, our investigation shifts towards political economy aspects of the relationship between sovereigns and domestic banks. We use date on the universe of credit extended over a 14 year period in Turkey to document a strong political lending cycle. We find that state-owned banks systemically adjust their provincial lending around local elections relative to the private banks in the same province. there is considerable tactical redistribution: state-pwned banks increase loans in politically competitive provinces with a current mayor aligned with the ruling party but reduce it in similar provinces with a current mayor from opposition.this effect only exists in corporate lending as opposed to consumer loans, suggesting that tactical redistribution targets job creation to increase electoral success. Such political lending also seems to influence real outcomes as the credit constrained opposition areas suffer a drop in economic output as measured by local construction activity.

This thesis shows how small-scale actions can accumulate into radical organisational transformations catalysed and enhanced through digital technology. Current literature on digital innovation and path creation offer powerful views on such transformations emphasising the vistas of opportunity opened by generative and flexible digital technology, and how new technology can be leveraged for organisational transformation. Digital transformations have predominantly been portrayed from the centralised perspective of a manager, entrepreneur or group of designers. However, emerging research on distributed digital innovation increasingly emphasises how radical transformations emerge from widely distributed networks as a result of contributions from multiple heterogeneous actors. The aim of this thesis is to inform emerging theory on distributed digital innovation by explaining the ways in which multiple digitally distributed actions can combine into radical organisational transformations. To this end, a two-year, multi-method case study of the distributed and radical digital transformation of frontline customer service at Barclays’ retail bank was conducted. The research design combines traditional qualitative research techniques with new computational methods in a ‘grounded computational analysis’ framework. This allows for a new empirical and conceptual perspective on the agency dynamics of distributed digital innovation. The findings suggest that organisational transformations can occur as a consequence of accumulation of multiple small-scale actions, contingent upon at least the following four factors: a) the sequence of previous transformations; b) the composition and structure of the innovation network; c) the co-occurrence of proposition, opposition and synthesis as micro-level interactions; d) the specific configurations of enacted agency dynamics. These findings are used to build a grounded process theory of ‘double-cumulative synthesis’ explaining the transformational power of specific configurations of digital agency dynamics. This contributes to the literature on distributed digital innovation by conceptualising the dynamics and structure of distributed agency dynamics that accumulate into radical organisational transformations.

This dissertation is an examination of the incentives, opportunities and disincentives for earnings management. The research was conducted for the listed, commercial banks in Cyprus. The period examined includes the years 2002-2011, for which the required information was available. After having considered the literature review, the regulations that affect banks’ financial reporting and the results from interviews conducted the research hypotheses were formulated and tested with regressions. The conclusions drawn from this empirical analysis are as follows. The existence of a cash bonus and leverage did not create incentives for earnings management through the use of discretionary accruals. This finding was observed because the bottom line profit was not considered in cash bonus decisions. In addition, most of the banks’ debt was in the form of deposits; deposit schemes do not include covenants that have to be met like other debt contracts. Discretionary accruals were therefore saved so that they could be used to manage earnings and increase regulatory capital. The evidence suggests that when the capital adequacy ratio was low, earnings were managed in order to artificially boost the capital base. The empirical results confirm that regulators perceived banks as being adequately capitalized and hence did not scrutinize bank practices. Banks were then able to grow and to grant loans very generously. Recognition of more interest revenue helped to cover higher interest paid to depositors and also helped executives to earn their bonus. The evidence also suggests that when the CEO was also the chairman of the board, the quality of earnings deteriorated. However, when directors owned shares and as board independence increased, the quality of earnings was improved. Considering the recent financial crisis and that one of the largest banks has collapsed, the results of this thesis should be of great importance to boards and their audit and remuneration committees, shareholders, depositors, auditors and the supervisory authorities.

Widespread losses during the recent financial crisis have raised concerns that equitybased CEO compensation (stocks and stock options) causes risky bank policies. This has led to the need to understand whether CEO pay can be re-structured such that it dampens risk-taking incentives. Against this background, this thesis analyses if debtbased compensation (also known as inside debt and consisting of pension benefits and deferred compensation) motivates CEOs to pursue risk-reducing bank policies. Over three decades of research into executive compensation has not explored the impact of inside debt, primarily due to lack of detailed data on inside debt which only became available after 2006 in the United States (US). The paucity of empirical work on inside debt is particularly unfortunate, given that the value of inside debt is often substantial. This dissertation provides one of the first empirical investigations into the impact of inside debt on bank risk-taking by determining whether CEO inside debt leads to less risky behaviour, through three policy decisions that are capable of increasing the overall risk of the bank. First, this thesis focuses on the payout policies of banks. Bank payouts divert cash to shareholders, while leaving behind riskier and less liquid assets to repay creditors in the future. Payouts, thus, constitute a type of risk-taking that benefits shareholders at the expense of creditors. The results presented in this thesis indicate that higher inside debt results in more conservative bank payout policies. Specifically, CEOs paid with more inside debt are more likely to cut payouts and to cut payouts by a larger amount. Reductions in payouts occur through a decrease in both dividends and repurchases. The results also hold over a sub-sample of banks which received government support in the form of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) where the link between risk-taking and payouts is of particular relevance because it involves wealth transfers from the taxpayer to shareholders. Second, this thesis tests the impact of inside debt on the risk implications of bank acquisitions. Bank acquisitions are large scale investment decisions that can affect bank risk. To this end, this thesis shows that higher inside debt holdings motivate CEOs to pursue acquisitions that result in lower bank default risk. It also prevents CEOs from using acquisitions to shift risk to the financial safety-net. Since the safety net is underwritten by the taxpayer, the results show that CEO inside debt has a measurable impact on the subsidy which bank shareholders obtain from taxpayers. Third, the thesis shows that inside debt plays a critical role in influencing bank capital holdings. Higher equity capital provides creditors with a larger loss-absorbing equity buffer to protect the value of their claims on bank cash flows. Ceteris paribus, higher equity protects creditors from losses. To this end, this thesis shows that higher inside debt results in motivating banks to hold higher capital, whether defined using regulatory or economic terms. Higher inside debt also results in reducing the estimated value of the taxpayer losses. Furthermore, banks with higher inside debt are at a lower risk of facing capital shortfalls. Taken together, the study provides insights on how incentives stemming from inside debt impact bank policies in a manner that protects creditor interests. Inside debt can help in addressing excessive risk-taking concerns by aligning the interests of CEOs with those of creditors, regulators, and the taxpayer. This thesis makes a novel contribution to the banking literature by providing evidence on the implications of inside debt in the US banking industry. This work should be interpreted as part of a wider body of research which demonstrates that inside debt matters for bank risk-taking and that this role of inside debt should be recognized more widely in ongoing discussions on compensation incentives in banking.

Nous cherchons à étudier les banques adoptantes de la banque en ligne dans l'industrie bancaire en Tunisie. Notre problématique consiste à déceler les facteurs susceptibles d'accélérer et de freiner l'adoption de la banque en ligne dans le secteur bancaire en Tunisie. La revue de la littérature que nous avons consultée nous a permis de dégager un ensemble de variable : organisationnelle, individuelle et structurelle. Notre méthodologie de recherche nous a permis d'expliciter la posture interprétativiste de notre recherche et la démarche abductive à laquelle nous avons procédé. Notre stratégie d'accès se caractérise par une méthode qualitative basée sur l'étude de cas. Nous avons mené cinq études de cas dans le secteur bancaire et guidées selon les principes de saturation et de réplication. Notre population se compose principalement des banques qui ont adopté l'innovation de la banque en ligne. A la suite de cette exploration théorique et empirique, nous avons pu mettre en évidence l'importance de certaines variables (la concurrence, les avantages perçus, la comptabilité organisationnelle...) liées à ces dimensions ainsi que d'en rejeter d'autres (les coûts d'adoption, la complexité...). De même notre recherche nous a permis de déceler certaines variables qui freinent l'adoption des innovations technologiques. Toutefois, nous avons pu dégager un aspect important de certaines variables liées à ces différentes dimensions sur d'autres afin de dégager un cadre spécifique au secteur bancaire tunisien. / This paper seeks to explore banks adoptive of online banking in the banking sector in Tunisia. Our objectives are to identify factors that may speed up or impede the adoption of the online banking in the banking sector in Tunisia. The review of the literature that we consulted has allowed us to identify a set of variable : organizational, individual and structural. We have explicit interpretative posture of our research and abdicative approach we have conducted. Our strategy is characterized by a qualitative method based on case study. Five case studies were conducted in the banking sector and guided according to the principles of saturation and replication. Our population consists mainly on banks which have adopted the "online banking" innovation. As a result of this theoretical and empirical exploration, we were able to highlight the importance of some variables (competition, perceived advantage, compatibility organization...) related to these dimensions and to reject others (costs of adoption, the complexity...). Moreover, our research allowed us to identify variables that impede the adoption of technological innovations. However, we were able to identify an important aspect of certain variables linked to these different dimensions on others to identify a specific framework of Tunisian banking sector.